Last spring, Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates stood in a room in the Colorado Capitol to announce their plans with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The gathering was small, and it seemed dwarfed by the large room where the bill’s supporters had assembled. They’d repeatedly delayed the proposal, and tweaked its scope, amid lingering concerns from Gov. Jared Polis — who months earlier welcomed immigration authorities’ presence in the state to help arrest “dangerous criminals.”
The delayed and low-key nature of that April news conference would make for a stark contrast with the unveiling of another round of immigration legislation just 10 months later.
At that rally last week, legislators gathered outside the state Capitol to launch a package of immigration bills drafted in response to President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. The group, with lawmakers flanked by dozens of supporters and advocates, filled most of the building’s west steps and spilled onto the concrete below.
The crowd chanted “Abolish ICE!” as legislators described plans to prevent anyone who’d worked for the agency from joining a Colorado police department, while tightening rules around detention centers and allowing Coloradans injured by federal authorities to sue them.
The events’ contrasts are emblematic of the shift on immigration — in rhetoric and, to some degree, in policy — among Colorado’s majority Democrats after a year of unprecedented enforcement. While Colorado has not been visited by the quasi-militarized surges of Minneapolis or Los Angeles, the state saw more than 3,500 immigration arrests over the course of Trump’s first nine months in the White House.
Graphic footage of federal agents’ killings of people in Minneapolis and high-profile operations in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Durango and affluent parts of the high country brought the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to the doorsteps of lawmakers and the Democratic base that elected them.
Some state legislators likened the current moment to the weeks after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, which helped unify Democratic lawmakers and spurred the passage of a marquee police oversight bill in Colorado.
Identifying a problem and agreeing on a solution is rarely a straight line in politics, and whether Democratic lawmakers’ comfort with criticizing ICE translates into full agreement on policy changes remains to be seen. Democrats nationwide are just starting to probe the scale of growing anti-ICE sentiment, and Polis, in a statement to The Denver Post, was lukewarm and “skeptical” about additional immigration measures.
Though he said he was open to the discussions, “I think we have to be mindful of what we already have on the books.”
But lawmakers here, particularly those who have long worked on immigration legislation, are preparing far-reaching measures as a response to what they’ve seen in the past 12 months. While last year they waited on negotiations with the governor, they’ve moved more swiftly this time around.
Less than three weeks before the rally, on the first day of the 2026 legislative session, the lawmakers had already introduced , which would allow Coloradans injured by immigration authorities to file lawsuits against those agents. And they were publicly describing plans for two more, both tabbed for introduction later in February, that would, among other things, further tighten laws around ICE cooperation and remind local police that they can detain federal agents during an investigation.
“Because Trump is so unpredictable, (Democratic) leadership, in general, really were wanting to take a more reserved measure on immigration” last year, said Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the 2025 bill and is involved in this year’s package. “But we were still able to get a pretty bold bill out of here. And yet still it’s not enough.
“I would say the legislature (this year) is actually saying we have to be more aggressive in protecting Coloradans. And the community’s been calling for it.”
‘They’re not scared,’ advocate says of lawmakers
After Trump won reelection in 2024 with a campaign focused on immigration and pledges to deport millions of people without proper legal status, Democrats across the country wondered whether the party needed to toughen its position on immigration.
Spring showed majority support for ICE raids, the use of military personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border and the banning of so-called “sanctuary” policies in cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
In Colorado at the time, some state lawmakers had privately worried that passing a bill strengthening the state’s sanctuary-like laws would only draw the ire of Trump, said Alex Sánchez, the head of the high country-based Voces Unidas, an immigrant-rights group.
Those conversations are different this year, he and others said.
While Colorado Republicans have generally defended immigration enforcement — if not fully embracing how it’s being carried out — a different breeze is blowing among Democrats, from those who control the state Capitol to the candidates vying to unseat a Republican congressman in the suburbs north of Denver.
“The biggest change I’ve seen is they’re actually talking about (immigration), and they’re not scared,” Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said of federal and state lawmakers. “It’s not across the board. But it’s been a clear shift.”
The intensive surge of immigration authorities into several blue states, and the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, helped swing public opinion against Trump’s immigration agenda. In his statement to The Post, Polis said the “images from the last year, especially the last few weeks, are incredibly disturbing.”
Some Colorado lawmakers pointed to public polling that has shown increasing opposition to ICE’s practices. A new nationwide found that 34% of nearly 1,200 voters interviewed in late January and early February supported how ICE was enforcing immigration laws — a 6-percentage-point drop from two weeks prior. Sixty percent said Trump’s treatment of undocumented immigrants had been too harsh.
Latinos are the largest ethic minority group in Colorado, and 40% of those polled last year said they or their communities feared being arrested by ICE. All of the poll’s respondents were U.S. citizens.
Every month has seemed to bring news of a new and controversial arrest, from a father and two children in Durango or a prominent activist in Denver to a schoolteacher in Douglas County or drivers headed to work in the high country. Nearly two-thirds of the 3,500 immigrants arrested in the state last year had no prior criminal convictions, according to ICE records obtained by .
Local advocates said they had documented ICE arrests and then broadcast what they’d found, including to lawmakers, to move the immigration crackdown from rhetoric to reality.
“Coming out of 2024, a lot of Democrats were convinced that they were just on the losing side of immigration as an issue,” said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. “And it was definitely the top issue mentioned by the Trump campaign, it was the main thing they ran on and he won with it.
“I think what we’ve seen — particularly over the last month, but somewhat more broadly over the last year — is just some of the consequences of the Trump administration’s crackdown, which looks more brutal than a lot of people expected.”
Facing public demands for action
The proximity of those arrests — coupled with the violent intensity of immigration authorities’ efforts in Minneapolis and elsewhere — has galvanized Democratic lawmakers.
Protests have erupted, too, further pressing elected officials to respond. Days before last week’s rally on the Capitol steps, hundreds of protesters gathered near the same spot to protest ICE.
“There is now evidence in our midst of what the federal administration is doing,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat.
After an ICE operation in nearby Frisco last year, local school attendance dropped by 35%.
“What we’ve seen in this state, and what we’re seeing on a national stage, has really caused our public to step up and demand that we take action,” she said.
The Colorado Democratic Party recently released a “Know Your Rights” toolkit on its social media accounts to provide immigrants with guidance on how to interact with ICE. Masket said he couldn’t have imagined the party doing that even six months ago.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, Denver’s longtime congresswoman, has called for the “dismantling” of the agency. A newly progressive-leaning Aurora City Council passed a resolution opposing ICE’s “lawlessness and overreach,” less than two years after one of that council’s members helped ignite a national firestorm over a transnational Venezuelan gang.
In Denver, City Council members soon will consider a local measure that would attempt to ban ICE agents (and other officers) from wearing face coverings.
U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — both of whom are facing contested primary elections in June, with Bennet seeking the governor’s office and Hickenlooper running for reelection — have increasingly criticized ICE. They’ve also supported Democrats’ decision to shut down the government over funding for the agency. Hickenlooper later voted for for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
Still, it’s unclear to what extent broad anger will help produce a coherent policy response, in Colorado and across the country. Nationally, have fretted over the calls — like those echoing from the Colorado Capitol’s stairs — to abolish ICE outright.
Two of the three expected measures in the Colorado legislature have yet to be introduced. One of them would prohibit state law enforcement officers from wearing masks and prevent any former ICE agents from becoming certified to work for Colorado agencies, said Reps. Yara Zokaie and Meg Froelich, who are set to sponsor the proposal.
The other would further expand last year’s cooperation restrictions bill — including with provisions aimed at Polis, who sought to sidestep the law last year and comply with an ICE subpoena. The measure would require the state to report ICE subpoenas it receives and state officials to alert anyone whose data may be included in the request.
The governor, also a Democrat, has taken a more neutral tone against Trump since the president returned to office last year.
But Polis has become more critical of the president’s immigration enforcement efforts: A year after he welcomed ICE to the state, Polis spent part of his final annual address to the legislature last month noting how many immigrant detainees had no criminal records, as well as listing the names of people killed and arrested by immigration authorities.
His office has also encouraged clemency applications by people convicted of nonviolent or minor crimes and who “are experiencing or fear being seized by the federal government and torn away from their families.”
Polis’ office declined an interview request for this story. In response to an emailed list of questions, Polis said his position on immigration enforcement had not changed. He told The Post that “when anyone is being investigated for a crime, whether they are here legally or illegally, we will work with anyone to apprehend and prosecute them. But unfortunately the federal government has not been targeted or transparent in how they are pursuing their enforcement activities.”
As for legislators’ plans this session, Polis said he hadn’t seen language on all of the proposals.
But he said he “would be skeptical of legislation that raises constitutional concerns or departs from the agreements reached last year.”
“I have been clear (that) I am willing to work with legislators on any issue to deliver the best policy for the state,” Polis said. “However, Colorado has some of the strongest protections across the country and I want to ensure that recent laws are being followed and fully understood and (that) new laws do not create confusion.”
Immigration a top issue in CD8 race
The changing politics of immigration have also slipped into one of the state’s most high-profile races this year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans won the 8th Congressional District seat in November 2024 in part by running on immigration enforcement and for supporting past legislation limiting state cooperation with ICE. Then-U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo on an issue that was seen then as a vulnerability for Democrats.
Last April, as the state legislature considered the bill further limiting ICE cooperation, then-Rep. Shannon Bird, a Democrat, was preparing to run against Evans. Later that month, she voted against the bill in committee and was absent for its final vote on the House floor.
Her campaign said last week that she’d missed the vote because of an ill family member. She’d voted no in committee, the campaign said, over concerns with proposed penalties that would be assessed to state or local officials who worked with ICE. Her campaign said Bird would’ve voted for the final version of the bill.
The penalty provision remained in the legislation when it passed the House and was later signed into law. Garcia and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, said Bird had not raised concerns to them last year.
“I don’t want to make assumptions about why she dodged the vote,” Garcia said last week.
Bird’s no vote and absence may have spared her attack ads from Evans. But, in another sign of how the political realities around immigration have shifted in the past year, that vote drew a caustic statement from one of her Democratic primary opponents in the 8th District, Evan Munsing.
In a statement, Bird’s campaign manager, Eve Zhurbinskiy, wrote that Bird “believes ICE is murdering people in our streets. Having violent, untrained and masked agents terrorizing our communities is unacceptable and un-American. Unlike Gabe Evans, who has voted for the Trump agenda every step of the way and enabled these attacks on law-abiding citizens, Shannon will always represent the needs of our community first — not the president.”
Evans has had to navigate his own immigration position in the swing district, which takes in northern Denver suburbs and Greeley.
He has said he wants the Trump administration to focus on immigrants with criminal records, but he also supported a Republican bill directing tens of billions of dollars in additional funding to ICE, even as more .
, Evans said he was worried about ICE officials’ assertion that the agency’s personnel can search homes with just an administrative warrant, rather than obtaining one signed by a judge. He said he looked forward to questioning Homeland Security officials during an upcoming House hearing.
But he blamed Democrats for the Minneapolis standoff and the broader impression that ICE was out of control.
“One side wants to fan the flames and equivocate in this space because they want an issue to run on in November,” he said.
He noted that ICE had stepped lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations aimed at criminals rather than the local industries that rely on immigrant workers.
“We have big meatpacking plants, we have big dairies, we have places where, if ICE was trying to meet a quota, you would see ICE going to them,” Evans said.
‘A failed system for decades’
Other Republicans have offered similarly mixed views on the crackdown, primarily expressing reservations with how itap being carried out.
During a debate last week in the state Capitol over a resolution calling for support for the immigrant community, two Republican lawmakers addressed their constituents in Spanish and spoke of the value of immigrants. Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, of Greeley, said he supported a humane immigration system — but, echoing Evans, he said the resolution was divisive and polarizing, and he and every other Republican voted against it.
Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican whose wife became a U.S. citizen last week, said in an interview that he was troubled that asylum-seekers and others without full legal status were being deported, in some instances, to countries other than those where they’re from.
But he wanted the federal government to enforce the country’s immigration laws, he said. He supported what Trump was doing, he said, even if he wished “he could be nicer about it.” He saw little chance that his caucus would support Democrats’ immigration proposals.
Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson said he was concerned by the October arrests of a father and two children in Durango, which was followed by an ICE agent throwing a protester to the ground. He said he’d reached out to Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, whose district includes Durango.
“It’s just has caused me to think more deeply about federal immigration and the recognition that itap been largely a failed system for decades,” he said, adding that he didn’t think mass deportations were the answer to that failure.
Still, he said, he wanted Democrats to acknowledge that there are “bad actors” who’ve entered the country without legal status. In his view, the state should cooperate with ICE, which in turn would help the agency focus on arresting people with criminal histories while reducing the likelihood of violent encounters between federal officers and the public.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
